An inclusive and accessible website for Thomas Broadbent of Huddersfield with big eco gains, improved performance, and more
Bnode delivered Huddersfield’s Thomas Broadbent with an accessible and inclusive website, gaining big eco savings plus many other business benefits, in what was Bnode’s biggest project in recent years. It’s the most extensive website that Bnode has worked on to date, and certainly presented some challenges. How were we able to give Broadbent the multilingual, inclusive and accessible website they needed whilst delivering performance gains as well as substantial reductions in their digital carbon and energy footprints?
A deep dive into Bnode's website for Thomas Broadbent of Huddersfield
Here, we take a deep dive into Bnode’s largest project to date – an improved multilingual, inclusive and accessible website for Thomas Broadbent’s of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
Working with Broadbent
We worked with Thomas Broadbent to design, build and realise their website. We also provided the company with on-going website support and green hosting services too.
Bnode delivered an extensive and comprehensive website with enhanced functionality and five language variants – English, French, German, Polish and Spanish. So, not only does the Broadbent website have the accessibility features that Bnode is renowned for but it’s multilingual too.
We were also able to deliver a 600% reduction in the website’s carbon footprint, and substantial website page weight loss through low code techniques to improve page load speeds and reduce energy consumption associated with this particular digital asset.
About Thomas Broadbent of Huddersfield
Established in 1864, Broadbent provides Separation Solutions for a wide variety of industries, market sectors and end-use applications. They manufacture and supply industrial machinery, plus provide spares, servicing and LAB R&D. Broadbent are based in Huddersfield but they have locations across the globe – in Australia, Canada, China, India, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, and the USA too.
Broadbent’s Brief to Bnode
Back in 2024, Broadbent’s brief to us was:
1) To design and build a new website with multilingual capabilities and class-leading accessibility functionality,
2) To create an inclusive and usable website experience that reflects Broadbent’s business morals and values,
3) To help with recruitment of younger generation workers, by giving them a sense of who Broadbent are,
4) Improve Broadbent’s CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) messaging,
5) Substantially reduce Broadbent’s digital carbon footprint and CO2 emissions.This posed some challenges:
Because Broadbent is a huge multinational company with several divisions, working across many different industries and sectors, the website needed to showcase each division and the related products, solutions and services without becoming colossal in size.
If the website got too big, not only would it become slow to load and difficult to navigate, risking information overload and making it harder for customers to find what they needed, but it would also cost more to host. Large websites are also demanding to maintain and update, requiring more time, effort and financial investment for content creation, SEO, and technical updates and enhancements, compared to smaller sites.
On-page video playback for Broadbent’s corporate videos needed to be incorporated too, to showcase the company and their operations, divisions, products and services.
The website should also be quick and easy to update, via a CMS (content management system).
This new multilingual, inclusive and accessible Broadbent website our largest Web project in 2024.
A comprehensive website with five language variants – English, French, German, Polish and Spanish.
The solution
The solution we provided Broadbent with is:
• A comprehensive website with five language variants – English, French, German, Polish and Spanish, multilingual as well as accessible,
• Video integration and on-site playback.
• Reduced carbon footprint through low code and green hosting,
• Accessibility tools for users with additional needs, following WCAG 2.2 where possible,
• UX (user experience) improvements,
• SEO (search engine optimisation) improvements and gains,
• Better contact and enquiry routing and filtration,
• A website that outperforms Broadbent’s competitors, that is quicker and easier to keep up-to-date.
How were we able to do this whilst delivering substantial reductions in Broadbent’s digital carbon and energy footprints?
Via designing and developing a much more efficient, leaner, lower code website with green hosting.
A reduction of 600% on the previous web page C02 footprint
Some stats
These are some of the Broadbent website’s stats – focusing on web page weight, digital carbon footprint, and energy consumption.
Back in 2023, before Broadbent and Bnode started working together, the Broadbent website’s homepage was a whopping 5MB with a carbon footprint of 3.924g in CO2 and equivalent emissions for every visit.
The old website was using 364KWH of energy – enough to drive an electric car for 134 miles!
Over the course of a year, and assuming 10,000 monthly page views (not unusual for a major global company) the old website produced between 140 and 186kg of CO2. That’s the amount of CO2 that 7 trees capture, absorb and store, and the number of mature trees that would be needed to offset it.
The Bnode Broadbent website only used 48KWH of energy – that’s 316KWH less! That means a big saving on hosting costs as well as an impressive reduction in carbon emissions associated with the website.
Web page weight is 1.84MB (down from over 5MB), and 0.584g of CO2 for the first visit – a reduction of 600%.
And, efficient web page caching and delivery means that for repeat visits to the homepage the figures are even lower – 0.019g of CO2 and a page weight size of 61.91 KB.
With a baseline of 10,000 visits to the website per month, and a split of 40-60 between new and returning visitors, the carbon footprint is 2.45kg per month. That’s the equivalent of driving 4.22 miles in a Tesla Model S, and watching 1 hour of Netflix (in HD). And only one single tree would be needed to offset that CO2 in a year.
Summary
So, in summary and by way of comparison:
🔸Their old website was using 364KWH of energy and needed 7 trees to offset the emissions.
🔹Their new website now uses 48KWH of energy and needs one tree to offset the emissions.
🔸Someone visiting their old website produced 3.838g of CO2 or equivalent emissions.
🔹Someone visiting their new website produces 0.577g of CO2 or equivalent emissions.
An impressive reduction, as I’m sure you’ll agree.
The benefits of a leaner website
So you’ve seen the stats and the 600% reduction in CO2 emissions gained, here are some of the other business benefits of a leaner website:
• Faster loading and reduced network delivery time to any device,
• Better user experience (UX) on all devices,
• Improved SEO and rankings for discoverability and citation
All of which ultimately leads to higher engagement and more conversions.
Plus:
• Your site is quicker and easier to update and maintain, and
• Takes up less space on a server
So you save money because simpler website maintenance and upkeep by focusing only on the content and features that are essential keeps your development and hosting costs down.
Delivering higher Performance scores
Bnode’s website for Broadbent showed marked improvements in Performance scores – 91 for Desktop, up from 67 for the previous incarnation. Page Load Times in seconds (s) / milliseconds (ms):
First Contentful Paint:
0.6 s
Largest Contentful Paint:
1.4 s
Total Blocking Time:
50 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift:
0.116
Speed Index:
1.0 s
SEO gains
By delivering demonstrable SEO gains, Bnode helped boost Broadbent’s rankings in the SERPs (search engine results pages), driving traffic to the website and enhancing visibility and discoverability.
Historically, content on the website was ‘thin’ and not optimised for good search engine visability.
For sure, Broadbent ranked highly for their own brand terms, but had low discoverability for the other things they wanted to show up in the search results for terms like “centrifuge manufacturers”, or “separation centrifuge manufacturers” for example.
That was before AI-driven search even became a thing.
AI-driven search
Good website content for AI-driven search is authoritative, well-structured, and directly answers user questions with clear, concise information.
Which is one reason why Bnode integrated comprehensive FAQ (frequently asked question) sections on the key pages of the Broadbent website.
The various FAQ sections directly address common queries from Broadbent’s customers, plus the short paragraphs and direct answers that make up the responses to those common questions are ideal for AI extraction, so it was a win-win all round.
E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), and fast page speeds all help AI easily find, extract, and trust valuable content for AI Overviews and direct answers to questions.
Search for “separation centrifuge manufacturers” for example, and you’ll see Broadbent mentioned prominently in the AI Overview, and Thomas Broadbent in the Key Manufacturers section.
Bnode's Accessibility Tool
Not only was Bnode’s website for Broadbent leaner, cleaner, greener and more discoverable, but also more accessible too.
This was thanks to Bnode’s built-in website accessibility and usability functionality, provided by our Accessibility Tool.
You will see it on every website that Bnode builds and not just the one we did for Broadbent.
Take a look at this video to see it in action.
By providing content in a user’s native language, businesses and organisations move beyond simple translation into actively being inclusive.
Multilingual options for a more inclusive website
It’s been a well-known fact for many years that multiple website language options are good for inclusion, but it is also vitally important if your business operates in more than one country or territory.
By providing content in a user’s native language, businesses and organisations move beyond simple translation into actively being inclusive, and fostering a sense of belonging and respect within the different website audiences.
Core benefits of language inclusivity
• Better UX (user experience) and accessibility for diverse customer bases and users, where English is a second language (if spoken at all).
• Fostering an international culture of dignity and respect, whereby providing native-language content in different territories signals that your brand values and respects a user’s cultural identity, rather than treating them as an afterthought or generic customer – your international customers feel “seen”, because language is a key component of resonating with your audience.
• Removing cognitive barriers and enhancing understanding, because navigating a website in a second language increases cognitive load in the user and can lead to frustration; but native-language options make information more understandable, reducing the likelihood of miscommunication or frustration.
Key impacts of better inclusivity
• Enhanced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), because companies that prioritise linguistic inclusion demonstrate a strong commitment to digital equality and responsible business, aligning their operations with modern social responsibility standards,
• Greater brand awareness, trust, loyalty and enhanced reputation, because consumers, customers and service users actively prefer value-driven brands, so being inclusive of varied linguistic needs not only demonstrates that you care about different global markets and your customers within them, but also improves your brand reputation globally,
• Higher sales and service uptake, because, according to CSA Research, 76% of online consumers prefer to buy products from websites where the content is in their native language, and 40% refuse to make a purchase if the product information isn’t available in a language they understand,
• Competitor advantage, because, by definition, having your website available in multiple languages actively shows your credentials as a global business, so prospective customers automatically assume that your brand is a more complex, professional, and sophisticated operation than your competitors who may only operate within one territory.
Multilingual web content also increases discoverability
On top of all the other benefits to your business, multilingual web content also increases your discoverability.
In 2026, search engines prioritise relevance, and that includes language.
A multilingual site allows your business to appear in region-specific search results and compete with local businesses in multiple markets and territories.
This approach helps you attract website traffic and business from new customers in global markets.
Multilingual websites are no longer a “nice to have”. They are a practical and essential solution for businesses and looking to reach everyone in their target global audience, in all markets and territories.
From expanding market reach to enhancing website accessibility and search engine optimisation (SEO), there are clear and measurable benefits to investing in a multilingual website, as has proven to be the case with Broadbent.
Five multilingual content options
We’ve integrated five multilingual content functionality and language options into the website build currently.
Initially, there were four options – English, French, German and Polish – but, with the addition of Spanish as another language option, this took the number up to five.
And, there’s scope for more language options to follow.
Choose French as a language option from the main menu, for instance, and you’ll see that all of the web page content text changes to Français – headings, sub headings and body text.
So, it’s an inclusive, multilingual website as well as an accessible one.
Broadbent multilingual options video walkthrough
Broadbent search functionality
What other features did Bnode implement for Broadbent?
Some of the other features and cool stuff Bnode implemented for Broadbent includes:
• On-page corporate video playback functionality, with Vimeo integration and subtitles for deaf and hearing impaired users,
• ‘A Day in the Life of Broadbent’ page for prospective Apprentices and new members of staff to get a sense of what Broadbent is like to work for and what opportunities the business offers,
• Comprehensive FAQ sections on key pages, to answer Frequently Asked Questions and provide citations that are relevant for AI-driven search engines that provide direct, summarised answers to queries within search results,
• Division-specific Contact Forms with enquiry routing, and
• Product pages with links to supplementary product guide PDFs.
PDF Services
And on top of all of that, Bnode also provided their PDF Conversion and Remediation service.
Plus a Professional PDF Accessibility Auditing and Review service, including Section 508 and ADA Compliance.
Inspired by Bnode and Broadbent?
So, not only did Broadbent get a new and improved accessible and inclusive website that was easier to manage and update, but they gained big savings on digital energy consumption and carbon footprint too, as well as many other additional business benefits.
You can also see some of Bnode’s other website builds for clients on the Website Case Studies page.
Finally, if you’re thinking about getting a new website this year (big or small) and want to do digital ‘right’, then just reach out to us via the contact form below.
You too can save your business or organisation money on hosting costs and get a feel-good factor from green hosting and reduced digital carbon footprint, all whilst also gaining many other business benefits – just like Broadbent did.